


4.06: The Salt Pillar

by Amand_r



Series: Torchwood, Season Four [8]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-16
Updated: 2010-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:07:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/pseuds/Amand_r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The team splits up to investigate two separate cases of things reappearing where they shouldn't, one on the Isle of Wight, and the other at the old Hub.</p>
            </blockquote>





	4.06: The Salt Pillar

"What you fear in the night in the day comes to call anyway."  
\--Counting Crows, 'Einstein on the Beach'

 

Toshiko Sato watched Owen Harper walk across the Hub. He laid on the sofa, pulled an afghan over himself and turned to face the cushions. She chewed on her pen cap.

Ianto Jones streaked across the Hub, stark naked. Seconds later an equally naked Jack Harkness dashed down the stairs, glanced about wildly, and took off in the opposite direction.

Gwen Cooper grasped the arm of the woman who held her and pleaded with her teammates not to shoot.

Ianto pulled the trigger and hit Owen in the shoulder.

Toshiko cried out and strained against Ianto's arms when Jack activated the transporter and it disappeared in a brilliant flash of light.

 

  


* * *

 

Brenda Watson was drunk. She'd had a few before closing up, okay, maybe more than what her gran would have called a 'wee dram', but she didn't have to work the next day, and that was what those Turkish fucks got when they skived off and left her to clean the kitchen by herself. Bosphoros wasn't huge, but that was a lot of kitchen to scrub. The owners were back from holiday next week, and thank goodness, because she'd had enough of this shite.

The Plass was deserted, shops long closed, and all the nightlife was a few blocks away from the Quay. She was going to cut across and get a taxi out at St James, or maybe just walk a little way to the club and dance off the alcohol. Or add to it. So many choices when one was off the next day.

It felt safe walking across the Plass—so open, so she wasn't alarmed when she saw the group by the water tower, a few people who stumbled as if they might have had a few too many already. She slowed when one of them, a man in a suit, threw a punch at someone else who fell backwards, and there was the inevitable restraining of both sides. The fallen man got to his feet and batted his helper away.

"One day I'll have the chance to save you," the man in the suit said, "and I'll watch you suffer and die."

Brenda slowed; that was a heavy conversation. The man who'd been hit waved a hand. "It was the only thing that would stop her!"

An Asian woman grabbed at one of the men and shook his shoulders. "Listen, when I was at reception, I managed to trip the lockdown timer." She glanced at Brenda, and it took Brenda a second to realise that she hadn't seen her, but looked through her. "The power should be coming back on any second. We can get back in."

The man in the suit took off then, running right towards Brenda. She was about to dodge him, to raise her hands to warn him off, say 'Oi!', but he streaked right _through her_ , as if she didn't exist.

Brenda turned to watch him go as the others raced towards her, but he had disappeared. When she turned back to the water tower, the rest of them were still there. No wait, there were fewer of them.

"I did, with the knife, and the glove," a dark-haired woman facing away from her was saying, and Brenda decided that she was just going to stop in earnest. She wasn't even sure that she should…did that woman have a gun? "And that's why the perception filter isn't gonna work on me."

The woman turned to her left and fired the gun in her hand right into the man's forehead. He fell, and Brenda screamed, clapping a hand on her mouth. She froze where she was, but no one turned towards her. Were they even real?

"What?" stuttered the other woman, "who is he -- ? Where did he come from?" The woman retrained the gun on her and she raised her hands a bit. "Please don't."

"I can't let you go," the woman with the gun said, "I've got to. I’m sorry. I've got to, I've got to, I've got to."

The man who'd been shot got up and Brenda watched him say something quietly to the woman. Both of them looked stunned to see him. Not just her, then.

"Put down the gun," the man said. "Susie, it's over." He held out a hand for the gun. "Now, come with me."

The woman with the gun stared at him, hands shaking. For a second Brenda breathed a sigh of relief, and then, just as abruptly as she'd done it before, the woman raised the gun to her own head and shot herself just under the chin. The man stared down when the body hit the ground, and the other woman cried, said something about remembering, and then right in front of Brenda, they all disappeared.

Brenda took off, her heels clacking on the Plass, purse swinging—she thought she heard the contents of it clattering to the ground as she ran, but she didn’t care. She was almost to Bute Street when her heel caught in the pavement and she went down, hands scraping the cement, and she stayed there, panting and shaking.

She was still there when the panda car came by and the officer stopped, left the vehicle and rushed to her side. She stared at him. Maybe he wasn't real, either. But he saw her, he really saw her, and when he reached out for her, his hands connected with her shoulder, solid, real.

"Miss? Miss? Are you all right there?" He crouched down in front of her and held her shoulders as she shook. Right in front of her, his vest, lovely and bright and _real_ , bore the name DAVIDSON.

"You're real," she whispered. "Thank god. You're real."

PC Davidson frowned, eyes searching her face. "You look as if you've seen a ghost."

  


 

"Everything here is frozen," Lois said into the phone and tried to stop her teeth from chattering. The wind was whipping her hair across her face and she stamped her feet on the ground, wondering why she had decided that a skirt was wise travelling apparel.

"Well, it is February," Gwen said amusedly into the phone. "You're not on the island yet?"

Lois watched Maggie inside the warm ticket office and rolled her eyes. "Not as such. We had to get a room last night. Did you know that the ferry doesn't run from Lymington in February?"

"Where does it run?" Gwen sounded vaguely amused. Lois was happy that someone was.

"From Portsmouth to Ryde, which is on the opposite side of Wight. Once we get there we have to drive," Lois flipped her collar up and peered at Maggie, who looked to be casually chatting with the old bloke at the ticket counter.

Lois could get back in the car, but stamping her feet and feeling pissy suited her. Plus, her coffee had been horrible this morning. The farther they got from civilisation the less capable the British were of making a decent cup of coffee.

"Well, when you do get there, give us a ring so that we know what's going on, hey?"

Lois knew when she was being dismissed. That was fine anyway. She didn't have anything to add. "Tell Dee that she still has to file those reports by five even though I'm not there. There's a timer."

Gwen made some noise in the back of her throat and hung up just as Maggie left the ticketing office, tugged her coat about her and ran across the car park. In her puffy down jacket, denims, boots and woolen headband designed to keep her ears warm and still let her ponytail bounce cheerfully on the top of her head, she looked the part of a ski bunny, and Lois looked like someone who didn't know how to dress for the elements.

She wasn't good with nature. And places that didn't have mass transit that ran every five minutes.

"We leave in an hour," Maggie said, and waved a hand. "It's freezing! Get in the car!"

They both jumped into the SUV and Maggie started the car, turning the heater on full blast. It hadn't been off long enough to have completely cooled down, and the warmth spread across Lois's hose-covered legs. Bliss.

"Lo," Maggie said, tucking the tickets into the sun visor, "please tell me you packed denims or some other heavy work trousers."

Lois shrugged. "I have slacks and a pair of coveralls."

Maggie sighed. "Okay, we have a little bit of time, and the Quay is open." She pointed to the hulking shopping arena that boasted hundreds of outlet stores. "Lois Habiba, you need to dress for a mess."

"Dress for a mess," Lois deadpanned as she pulled her shite coffee from the cup-holder and took a sip. Absence did not make the tongue grow fonder. Maggie started the SUV and pulled out of the Wightlink lot.

"I bet they have a Starbucks," Maggie sang.

Lois gestured at the windshield with the cup. "Sally forth, my good woman."

 

  


* * *

 

The beeping woke him, which was surprising because Jack hadn't expected to be asleep when his alarm went off. He slapped at the mobile on the bedstead and must have hit it, or broken it, because it quieted and the room fell into blessed silence again.

The warm body curled tighter about him from behind, pulling gently at his waist, and he slid his arm back under the covers and over it, pressing that arm to him, threading his fingers into the grasp and sighing into the pillow. Somewhere by his feet a creature shifted and moved. He glanced down. Dog.

Dog. Dog. Dog—oh.

Gretchen pressed her face into the nape of his neck and laid a kiss there. Her breasts were warm against his back, and for a moment he closed his eyes and pretended, suspended, toasty and quiet, slowed down. Peaceful.

Gretchen's alarm went off on her side of the bed and she pulled away from him, a little whine in the back of her throat; the dog took that as his cue to run up the bed and plant himself between the two of them.

There was a strange but familiar noise and Jack's stomach did a little flip when he heard it. Gretchen picked up the dog and deposited him on the floor, then slid behind Jack, spooning his body with her now larger one, her hands callused and tapered, the hair on her chest tickling his back.

Ianto pressed his lips to the join of Jack's shoulder and neck. "Get up before Gwen bombards your phone with messages." Jack pushed back into the circle of Ianto's naked arms and ground himself into the hardness of Ianto's cock, and behind him the man sucked in a breath. "That's not conducive to being on time for work."

"You don't have to go anywhere," Jack said, voice rough with morning disuse.

"Mmm, you have a point." Ianto bit his earlobe gently and reached around with one hand to grab Jack. "On the other hand, I have to start looking for work. Man cannot live by sex alone."

That jolted Jack out of the pretend. Gretchen was good at this strange mix of herself and Ianto, and Jack found the more he was around it, the more he didn't mind that little things were off. Ianto's instinctual curses when he dropped something were different. The noise he made when he was coming was a little too nasal. But it didn't matter. It was Ianto over time, Ianto changed. It was comfortable.

But this reminder that Gretchen needed to get a job, that was too much. Jack rolled forward and threw one leg over the bed, foot on the floor.

"And here we go, slaves to work," Ianto said, pulling a pillow over his face to block the morning sun.

The dog followed Jack into the bathroom and sat under the pillar sink, watching him piss. Jack didn't hate dogs, but he did find them unnerving when they sat in the room and watched him while he did things. "You are a nuisance," he told Rickenbacher.

The dog just tilted its head. Jack wondered if it knew something he didn't.

Jack showered and pulled on yesterday's clothes, grimacing at the socks. Day-old socks were the pits. He didn't quite mind that he was wearing old clothes—he could just change them when he got to the Hub, and there were some advantages to wearing similar clothes every day (only Lois would notice that it was the same shirt, but she was out of town), but something about wearing day-old socks was skeevy.

He put the rest of himself together, gave the dog a pat on the head and shrugged on his coat at the door as he listened to Gretchen putter about the kitchen. The coffee grinder sounded. Ah, yeah, he remembered this deal. He could stay for a cup of coffee.

He kept the coat on anyway.

"Will you come by tonight?" Ianto asked as he dumped the ground coffee into the filter. Ianto didn't like filters, but Gretchen did.

Jack reached out and flipped the tag in on the t-shirt he wore, then let his hand drift over Ianto's shoulder to pull him back. Ianto turned in his arms and his hands went up to Jack's collar, smoothing the edges of it. Some movements were so ingrained in the idea of Ianto, Jack wondered if Gretchen had thought of them herself or seen them on video. This one was probably instinctual. What did that say about both of them that this was their first reaction? Was there something in them both that—

"We have to stop doing this," he said into the tuft of hair that flipped out and curled over Ianto's ear. He needed a haircut.

Ianto turned his head into Jack and inhaled deeply, smelling, feeding maybe, Jack knew he was giving off enough low-level sadness to be a mild form of appetiser for Gretchen, and he was okay with it. He couldn’t stop it, and it might as well be useful to someone.

"You're right," Ianto said. "I know you're right."

Funny, Jack thought as they clung to each other in the kitchen and rocked, listening to the early morning sounds of rubbish men making the rounds, how right one could be and still not do anything about it.

 

  


* * *

 

Gwen texted Dee and Jack with a, 'TORCHWOOD! ON THE PLASS!' and tucked her phone back into her pocket. She sat on the step that led down into the basin and waved to Andy as he walked along, coffees in hand.

"Hey there," he said, joining her on the step and handing her a coffee. Andy was in plainclothes, which meant that this was off-hours. Gwen had known that, but it was still important to remember. She was officially on the clock, as much as there was an official clock. Andy was here out of the goodness of his heart. He'd once joked that he had a nose that twitched whenever he was on to a mystery, but Andy wasn't very good at twitching his nose without screwing up his whole face. It had been comical at the time. Now it was just a metaphor for why she hadn't hired him.

"So go through this more," she said, sipping from her coffee and watching a pair of skateboarders on the pavement. It was bloody cold, and her arse was freezing. She wrapped her hands about her cup and hunched over.

Andy waved his cup and pointed with the index finger. "Last night, some girl ran out onto Bute Street in hysterics. Said there were ghosts on the Plass, and one of them shot another one." He shrugged. "Ghosts, all that, she was a little drunk. Wouldn't have paid it any attention, except that the man she said was shot was wearing a long gray military coat."

Gwen sighed. "Where was he shot?"

Andy glanced at her. "That's the thing." He raised a finger gun and pressed it to her forehead. "Right between the eyes. And then, get this, he gets up—probably because he's a ghost, I wager—and the woman who shot him shoots herself in the head."

Gwen blinked and tried not to give anything away. "On the Plass?"

"By the water tower."

The sun chose that moment to come from behind some clouds and hit the tower, shining the brassy plates. They'd replaced the tower along with everything else, but it had that dulled finish so that it looked as if it had been there for ages. Gwen had never quite appreciated the distressed aesthetic until now. Even the paving stones looked as if they had been carved out of a quarry and placed there a hundred years ago.

"What do you reckon? Ghosts?"

Gwen shook her head. "Jack isn't dead, Andy. And there's no such thing as ghosts." She tilted her head. "Not…you know, those kinds of ghosts."

Andy smiled and sipped from his coffee. "Ghosts in the machine," he mumbled.

One of the skateboarding kids tried to go down a railing and fell onto it in a very painful-looking way. Gwen didn't have that part of anatomy, but she could sympathise with the impact. Andy winced. "Well, we won't know what's going on until we check out the likely source," she said to him, slapping his knee and standing.

"What, you mean go down into the disaster area?" She'd never told him the precise location of Torchwood, but once it had exploded, he'd pretty much sussed it, and Gwen hadn't bothered to try to hide it. It was very hard to hide anyway, what with the UNIT trucks and the construction and the excavation.

She started down the steps and he followed her. They couldn't take the invisible lift because it didn't exist anymore, but they still had the other entrance. "Oh come on, it will be fun."

Andy joined her and together they made their way across the rest of the Plass and under the bridge towards the TIC. "Ah, working with Torchwood again. Feels like old times."

Gwen waved to an old man on a bench and tried not to look at Andy. She sipped from her coffee. "You know why I didn't hire you when I reformed Torchwood last year, right?"

It was Andy's turn to blink and pull a blank face. "I'm better off where I am, yeah?"

Gwen stared at the gulls and stopped short of the tourist office. "Yeah. Something like that."

Andy leant against the railing and watched the ducks below them in the water. "It's okay, you know. With all you'd been though, I figured you wanted a bunch of fresh faces you didn't know…"

Gwen smiled, and that was as good a reason as any. "Right."

Andy took in a deep breath and blew it out. "That's fine and good then, and I'm glad to help." He caught her eye. "But no more pulling strings. Don't think I don't know it was you who arranged that commendation."

Gwen shrugged. "That's hard to deny. You deserve it."

Andy gestured with his coffee. "Don't help me any more, unless you want to give me a job."

There was nothing to say to that because she did feel guilty. Partly. She didn't hire Andy for several reasons, and she wasn't sure if some of them were fair. And other reasons were uncomfortable. On the other hand, Andy liked where he was, so it wasn't a great hardship to stay there, and she figured that if they worked together every once in a while, then it filled his extraterrestrial excitement quota. Plus it was just good business to have a friend on the force who could move about unnoticed. Kathy Swanson hated her guts, especially after the Banana Caper.

Gwen swilled her coffee and tried to clear the images that called up.

"Right then, shall we?" she said and they turned for the door. The tourist office was a bit cheerier these days, repainted and with repaned windows. The people in charge of it really meant business. In fact, they liked the tourist office thing. She opened the door and smiled at the bell that trilled over her head.

The woman behind the counter looked up and smiled. "Gwennie!" she said, and then tilted her head back. _"Russ! Gwen Cooper is here!"_ The room was too small for that decibel of shouting and Gwen flinched.

Russ popped his head out from behind the bead curtain that they'd kept as a tribute to the old tourist office and waved at them with a cup of tea that sloshed all over his hands. "Hullo!"

"Good morning," she said and leant on the opposite end of the counter. Andy mirrored her and Gwen waved a hand. "Andy, meet Russ and Rachel Milligan, two of the only people to ever actually retire from Torchwood."

Rachel extended her hand to Andy. "We're rare, like a four-leaf clover."

Russ laughed. "I would say mythical, but I think we have one of them catalogued somewhere."

Gwen let Andy shake hands whilst she leant on the counter and watched. Russ and Rachel Milligan were both in their early sixties, fit and trim, with gray hair and glasses. In fact, with their round faces, nearly identical height and bright blue eyes, they could have passed for siblings. Hell, they could have passed for accountants, or insurance adjustors.

Only Gwen and a few other people knew how very deadly they both were.

"You used to be Torchwood?" Andy asked. Apparently he, like many other people, assumed that black ops meant a certain type of person, despite what he knew to the contrary. Sometimes Gwen wondered if Russ and Rachel's ordinariness was what allowed them to persevere so long. After all, it wasn't often that anyone survived Torchwood long enough to retire; the odds that a married couple would had to be slim.

Ianto would have known the numbers.

Russ snorted and Rachel picked up her tea mug. "Used to be? Sonny boy, what do you think we're doing working here?"

Andy glanced at Gwen, and his face was a mask of confusion. Russ rounded the counter to flip the sign over in the window, reading _So sorry! We'll be right back!_ but didn't lock the door. Good enough; Jack and Dee would have to get here before Gwen would agree to an excavation in the Hub. Safety issue.

"Russ and Rachel were enjoying life in the Cotswolds, but I bribed them to come back here," she told Andy as she finished her coffee and tossed the cup in the rubbish bin.

"Bollocks, we were languishing with boredom," Rachel said, and closed the ledger in front of her. "This is the most excitement we've had since ninety-seven."

"It's true," Russ added as he straightened the display for target shooting. "If I had to attend a lemon shandy afternoon and talk about Agatha Raisin one more time I might have deliberately looked for a way to Rift in aliens."

"Really?" Andy said, brows raised. "Tourism that exciting?"

"Oh, they enjoy that, I'm sure," Gwen said, talking about Russ and Rachel as if they weren't there. Russ's eyes sparkled. Confusion always amused him. "But the Milligans are the guardians to the last and only entrance to old Torchwood Three."

Andy blinked.

Rachel waved her hand at him again, a smile plastered to her face. "Yes. Hullo."

 

  


* * *

 

Maggie and Lois pulled into Alum Bay later than expected. There had been a general set of mishaps fuelled by several things, but in the end, the best part of the day so far, the only good part of the day had been sitting in the SUV on the ferry ride to the island with Lois, drinking coffee and demolishing a box of Krispy Kreme donuts.

Everything after that had been bad, from sicking up the Krispy Kreme donuts, to getting lost on a forty-minute drive, to possibly losing a hubcap. They hadn't looked and Maggie didn't want to know.

Maggie pulled the SUV into the lot next to the wooden docks and opened her door, rummaging in her pockets for her gloves. Lois was already out the door and around the back, opening the boot and pulling out the sampling kit they'd packed. Lois was polite enough to leave her tech kit alone, for which Maggie was grateful. It was just a thing. She wanted to carry her kit, she thought as she slung the reinforced strap over her shoulder. Lois handed her the bright green Torchwood badge, visible from yards and yards and possibly from space, and she hung the lanyard around her neck.

They were three metres from the first wooden slab when one of the few boats bobbing in the water creaked with an opening door, and a yellow-vested police constable stepped out of the main cabin, tucking on his checkered hat. Aw, bless his little hat.

"Does this have anything to do with the rockets?" the Constable asked as they walked towards him on the dock.

Maggie tugged on her second glove and glanced at Lois. "Rockets? No, not—we're from Torchwood."

The constable blinked at the two of them, and did that 'But you're women' thing with his eyeballs, which wasn't as offensive when you realised that most people assumed that Torchwood was black ops and Maggie and Lois looked like shopgirls. And it wasn't that reaction that mattered, really, it was the one that came after.

"PC John Crispin," he said, extending a hand and giving them both a hearty shake. "Sorry about that," he told them, shoving his hands in his pockets. "You're here for the Needles."

Maggie and Lois exchanged looks. "Yes," Lois said. "But I'm afraid that we're woefully unprepared for the expedition, conveyance-wise."

Crispin grinned at them. "Bubbers and I are taking you out in the panda boat," he said. "We're at your disposal, actually."

Maggie smiled and shrugged her bag higher on her shoulder. Lois waved a hand. "Well then, lead on, PC Crispin."

The boat was a small thing, not meant to be lived in, but definitely made for search and rescue. It was weighted down with all the equipment island police might need on the spot, all lashed and secured to various places. "You a regular on the water, Crispin?" Maggie asked.

The PC walked up the gangplank and turned to them. "Second home, it is." He waved a hand at the pilothouse towards the center of the boat. "Bubbers is in there. He's shy."

Maggie waved to the pilothouse and a beefy hand stuck out of the window and waved back. Bubbers was not going to be making an appearance. The engine started and she dumped her bag on the deck. Lois jolted a bit and staggered. No sea legs, this one.

"Have you ever been on a boat before?" Maggie asked her as PC Crispin left them to unmoor the boat from the dock. Lois set her kit on a bench that was bolted to the gunwale and blinked.

"We were on the ferry this morning."

"Oh my god," Maggie laughed. "This is going to be cracker. Do you get seasick?"

Lois shrugged. "First time for everything," she offered.

"Everyone ready?" Crispin called, and when they gave him the thumbs up sign he waved to the pilothouse. "Take her out!"

The boat bobbed in the water and then began to ease forward, sliding away from the dock with practised ease.

"The Needles are on the westernmost tip, so we'll come around to see them." Crispin wiped his nose with a handkerchief and stuffed it back into his pocket. Maggie wondered how old he was. He looked about twenty, but was probably thirty, and had the lean tanned form of a man who spent a lot of time on the water. Not inadvisable when one was a police officer on an island.

They all walked about, and he stowed their packs so that they didn't get jostled in rough waves. The sun beat down on them, but despite the light on the water, it was freezing cold. February was not a good time to be on the sea. Maybe if you were in the Bahamas, but not the British Isles.

Lois shivered and leant against the railing as the boat chugged out into the bay. Crispin stood next to her and stared out at the water. "So are you excited?" he asked.

Lois and Maggie exchanged a look. "I have to admit that we're uninformed about what's been going on. Just something about a needle and a Bible story?"

Crispin smiled. "Torchwood likes to keep you in the dark, does it?"

Maggie shrugged. "Something like that."

The boat veered to the left and made for the coast there, following the line. The water bashed against the rocks in giant plumes, shooting up into the air and blossoming into spray. It would have been pretty, if she wasn't sure that sooner or later she'd get hypothermia. For now, though, her heart beat in her chest like a drum, and the beat it gave off was one of excitement, readiness, like the little springs and toe flexes a diver did on the edge of the board before the final jump into the water.

Crispin had to shout a little to be heard over the throttle. "What do you know about The Needles?"

"We Got the Soul, right?" Maggie joked and Crispin made a face like he got lots of Needles jokes. "Sorry, had to do it once."

"Fair cop," he joked, and then laughed at himself. Maggie liked John Crispin. "I take this to mean you don't know anything, then."

"Pretend we're tourists, Constable," Lois said, and Maggie shoved her hands into her pockets.

PC Crispin smiled, and it was as if the sun came out. Oh, he probably had a way with the ladies, Maggie thought. "The Needles are natural chalk stack formations off the very western tip of the Isle of Wight." He sounded like he was rattling off a spiel for a tour group. Oh well, whatever got the job done.

"Right," Lois said, nodding.

"They were named that for the needle shape of the most familiar or distinctive stack, a spire in between the second and what is now the…what was the third stack." Crispin shook his head and continued. "Known as Lot's Wife because of its shape and white appearance, it was lost to a storm in 1764."

"Oh," Lois said, "I'm sorry."

Crispin smiled. "Yeah, except that's where you lot come in," he said and the boat rounded the edge of the coast and was onto the Needles then; Maggie could see why they were an attraction, these strange formations that stuck out of the water like pointed teeth. If there had been more of them it might have looked more frightening, but the fact that there were only three of them simply added to the geological mystery.

Or, she thought as she reconsidered, staring at the white spire erupting between the second and third jagged-looking tooth thing, you know, four of them.

"Isn't that…?"

"Yeah," Crispin said with a bit of a puzzled smirk. "It grew back Sunday night."

Lois put her hands on the railing as the boat took a wide pass around The Needles. Maggie watched the water crash into the chalk formations and then they blinked at each other.

"Whoa," she mouthed.

Lois grinned. "Indeed."

 

  


* * *

 

Harkness was wandering across the Plass about the time Dee came down from the Norwegian church. Harkness waved as she neared him. "Good morning. Fancy meeting you here. Admiring your handiwork?"

She gave him a withering glare. She was going to say something about water under a bridge or forgiving and forgetting, but he had a point. It wasn't as if she'd just stolen his newspaper a few times. She'd blown him and his entire base up (then buried him in concrete, mustn't forget that). Maybe one day they'd be able to joke about it in a way that didn't seem as if they were going to knock each other into the bay. But that day wasn't today. So she just swallowed it, like drinking a cup of barium before an x-ray.

They sort of converged in the oval basin and stood there for a second before realising that they probably were going to have to go to the TIC. If Cooper had them going underground (and why else come down here?), then they'd need to go through the passageway.

"Those look like the same clothes you wore yesterday," she remarked casually and was pleased to see the minute flinch. "Ooooh, Harkness, did you have a sleepover?"

Harkness stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Come along next time, and we'll braid your hair." They rounded the corner past the big…circle…thing (one of these days she would learn the name of it, but she wasn't about to ask Harkness) and turned right onto the wooden boardwalk.

As much as Dee didn't want to admit it to herself, she was slightly curious to know who was greasing Harkness's gears. Not because she was jealous, but more because she wondered where he had met them. At a bar? Pulling? In a club? Match dot com? Really, it was a mystery. And it was a toss-up. Male? Female? Alien? Probably not alien, but who knew? Lois's new 'someone someone' was a Qag. Why not Harkness?

"Do you know what this is about?" Harkness asked Dee as they passed the benches. She shook her head and then let him reach for the door handle. The closed sign was already up, but she could see Cooper inside with others, probably the Milligans.

"And when I saw him across the warehouse, covered in entrails," Rachel was saying as Harkness opened the door. "I knew that he was the one."

Russ waved at them. "And that was the beginning of our whirlwind romance."

Harkness laughed. "I think I saw a porno like that once."

Rachel snapped her fingers. "I think I saw you in a porno like that once."

The fourth person, PC Davidson, turned to look at them and widened his eyes in a little bit of shock. It could be because he hadn't seen Harkness since…well. Or it could be because ever since Dee and Andy's first meeting, he'd walked on eggshells around her, probably convinced that she was going to pistol-whip him for deliberately being a problem during the whole 'apprehending Torchwood' affair. Despite what others thought about her, she didn't go about pistol-whipping people left and right.

The military trained you in martial arts. She didn't need a pistol for that.

Harkness crossed the small lobby and held out his hand to Russ. "I heard that you two were in town, but I figured I should keep my distance, lest you take off again," he finished, leaning forward to kiss Rachel on what started as the cheek but turned to the lips. Dee rolled her eyes. Harkness was incorrigible. With everything and everyone. To Cooper he said, "Every time I was going to a different branch of Torchwood, these two would transfer out right before me."

Cooper nodded firmly. "A sound choice."

Rachel looked wistful. "Poor timing."

Russ rocked on his feet and stuffed his hand in his pockets. "Probably why we're still alive."

Harkness shrugged.

Dee sighed. "This is all lovely, but I remind you the Hub is empty with Maggie and Lois gone and Gretchen…" she trailed off. She didn't know what to say about Gretchen. None of them did. So they never brought it up.

Because ignoring things was the best way of dealing with them. Right.

Cooper waved a hand to Andy. "Tell everyone about the ghosts on the Plass."

PC Davidson shook himself and set his coffee cup down on the counter, then proceeded to tell them the Legend of Sleepy Roald Dahl Hollow.

It was hard to believe, but Cooper thought there was something to it. Russ and Rachel listened intently and Harkness with half an ear, or rather, half an eye, because he could have been paying full attention, despite his eyes roaming the tourist office continually. Dee wasn't sure how much this bothered him, being here, or if he was old enough, experienced enough that he had made his peace with it. She had thought that Harkness would have had enough time to have reconciled with Jones's death, but his little private conversations rather proved that incorrect.

"Obviously something is malfunctioning down there," Cooper finished.

Russ frowned and Rachel slipped back behind the bead curtain. "Well, the Rift monitor has been silent over here." He blinked. "Maybe it's broken."

Cooper patted Russ's hand. "It's all right. Remember, you're just here to make sure no one tries to get in. You don't have to monitor the Rift or anything down there."

Russ shrugged and Rachel emerged from the backroom with a box. "Once an operative, always an operative," she said resignedly. "I have the hats."

Dee sighed and pulled her hair from its tail. The hardhat never fit over her ponytail. She hated the hardhat.

The four of them each took one from the Milligans, fitting them in place (Harkness looked just as irritated about having to cover his head as Dee felt); then Andy's eyes goggled when Russ pressed the button on the other side of the counter and the access door buzzed and opened. They took their torches and flicked them on. There was emergency lighting, but it wasn't very good, and sometimes it was unreliable depending on any number of minute things that seemed as frivolous as 'It's Tuesday'.

Cooper and Harkness walked down together ahead of Andy, and Dee took up the rear. The Miligans stayed behind—the place wasn't quite sound, plus as guardians of the door they needed to be outside to ring the rescue team if something went horribly awry. Dee never liked the sound of that. It was the word 'awry'; it never inspired confidence.

"So we're investigating ghosts," Harkness said. "Of which I happen to be one."

"That's a sobering thought," Dee mumbled. "You shedding ghosts everywhere." She swept a wall with her torch.

"Like cat hair," Harkness replied.

"I suspect that the Ghost Machine we unearthed ages ago is somehow on and malfunctioning," Cooper said. Harkness glanced at her and she raised her brows. "Unless you have other ideas."

"No I just didn't think you'd got that far."

"Had you?"

Harkness batted a hanging wire away from his face as he walked. "Nah, but I was trying not to come to any conclusions until we saw the...oh."

They had come to the cog wheel door, or what would have been the cog wheel door if the cog wheel was still there and not…somewhere else. They all stopped in the doorway and stared out at the ruins of old Torchwood Three.

Dee and Cooper were familiar with the image, but Harkness wasn't, and neither was Andy. The inside of the old Hub was a hollowed-out shell of scrap metal, exposed wires, burnt concrete and water-damaged things. When the loose debris had been removed, they had only bothered to clear out the main atrium. The peripheral rooms had been scavenged and then left as is. But in order to make the Plass above structurally sound, a large scaffolding had been permanently erected through the Hub space and used as the building blocks for the ground above. Dee had been in cathedrals all across Europe, she understood buttressing and architecture, but this construction always looked iffy to her.

The scaffolding allowed them places to walk, since all the catwalks and walkways of the Hub had been blasted apart at the epicenter--the lift, actually--and even now, some upper decks had walks that just ended, gaping out into space without railings.

Andy whistled under his breath when Cooper hit the hanging switch and the rest of the aux-lighting they'd set up went on, dousing the place with the incandescent glow of hanging construction bulbs.

"And this was all under the Plass," Andy muttered.

Harkness recovered fairly quickly because he whistled low and looked over his shoulder. "Makes you wanna go home and look under your couch, doesn't it?"

Dee was about to kick him in the back of the leg when--

"JESUS MARY AND—" Andy bit out, darting back as a figure ran partially through him and across the Hub. If Dee wasn't mistaken, it was Ianto Jones. Starkers.

Cooper covered her mouth with her hand and Harkness stood ramrod-straight. Dee blinked as the figure ran through some non-existent doorway and down what looked like they had once been stairs.

"Well," Cooper said, lowering her hand. "That was enlightening."

Harkness raised a finger. "Wait for it."

They all watched as a second figure, definitely shadow Harkness, darted down the demolished and so now invisible stairs and glanced about, then ran in the opposite direction from Ghost Ianto. Dee might have made a comment about Harkness's anatomy if she hadn't seen the show for longer than she cared under less than pleasant circumstances for both of them.

"No sound," Cooper murmured. "You said this girl heard them talking."

"That's what she sa…" Andy trailed off when the sounds of typing began. Dee tried to trace the noise, but it was difficult in the echo.

Harkness and Cooper had no such problem. They focused their torches on a section of the Hub that had once been the atrium, directly on Ghost Toshiko Sato sitting at nothing and typing. She looked faintly bored.

How horrible, that you could leave an imprint behind to become a ghost and it was just sitting and typing. Dee waved her torch about, looking for other signs of movement. There in the lower levels that might have been the old morgue, there was a sound of a buzz saw and someone yelled an expletive. Andy jumped, and Dee steadied him. She had to admit that it was pretty bloody unsettling.

"Owen," Cooper murmured.

Harkness shook himself and swept his torch around, possibly looking for other ghosts. "Yeah, this is going to be fun. Looks like it's got a little more juice than the last time we played with it."

Dee tilted her head and watched a phantom lift rise up to the ceiling. On it, the others restrained Ianto as he screamed. The sound didn't echo; sound should echo, right?

Cooper turned back to them, away from the Hub and facing the hallway. "All right," she said quickly, "The last time we saw the Ghost Machine was when Ianto locked it in your vault, right?" She glanced at Harkness.

"Yeah, but it might not have stayed there forever. That was only ever temporary." Harkness waved a hand. "Things that were immediately important or required monitoring were in there. Ianto would have moved it to archival space six weeks after we found it, since it proved to be dormant."

Dee shook her head. "It can't hurt to look in your vault, though, right?" She pointed her torch past Harkness at the ruined water tower, a blackened metal stump pushing out of the ground, with scaffolding welded to it. A girder stuck out of the hollow middle of it and reached to the ceiling, probably helping to hold up the new water tower, which did not run down here. "If we can even get there from here, that is."

Cooper pointed her torch towards the ground floor. "It's over there."

They made their way over in the direction of Harkness's old office, eyes and torches sweeping for new ghosts and sounds. They couldn't hurt anything, Dee was fairly sure, but they were unnerving, and no one liked being surprised by the sound of a bone saw. Harkness took the lead and stepped into the office, blocking the doorway so that they all paused.

Cooper bumped into him. "What is it?"

Harkness turned suddenly, trying to take up as much space in the doorway as possible. "We might just want to wait here for a minute, okay?"

Dee rolled her eyes. Andy shifted from one foot to another. Cooper peered over Harkness's shoulder. "What's wro—"

"Unnnnnnnnngh, just, oh…." Came from inside the office, and the sound of things falling off a desk.

Harkness blinked. "Yeah, uhm."

Cooper leant against a railing. "We'll wait. Ghost you can't take that long."

 

  


* * *

 

"Of course it wasn't in my office," Jack said, lifting his hand and staring at the bubbles that encircled his wrist. "I could have told them that."

Ianto reached around him and squeezed the sponge of hot water out on his chest. "I'm sure. Gwen should have known better. Please."

"Apparently you archived it in the vaults."

"Obviously."

Jack paused. "You wouldn't know where—"

"Certainly not. Try the card catalogue."

Jack pushed back against the body behind him and groaned when Ianto bit his shoulder. "You are not helpful."

"It is no longer my purpose in life to be helpful." Ianto paused and placed a kiss at the nape of Jack's neck. "Well, not to Torchwood." He wrapped one leg over Jack's and drew up his knee so that the back of his ankle brushed parts of Jack's anatomy. "This is the best bathtub ever."

It was pretty neat, Jack had to admit. A giant claw bathtub installed by the previous owner, it fit both of them without too much discomfort. And he was tired of showers. And he was tired of being by himself at night. This was an adequate substitute. Morbid, but adequate. He tried not to think about that. Instead, he thought about the fact that there was a body wrapped around him, and it was familiar and he was tired and okay and mildly amused.

"So there's ghosts of us acting out things on the Plass," Ianto said mildly. "I hope I look good."

Jack stuck his toe in the dripping tap. "Yeah, you look good."

"Excellent. Still, isn't it worrisome that there's ghosts on the Plass?"

Jack shrugged. "Can't cordon off the Plass, can't find it yet, so until we do, everyone gets a mysterious show."

Ianto was silent for a long moment, and then. "I should go down there and—"

"No free shows of confusion for the locals, Gretchen," he said suddenly, breaking it all up. Ianto's hand paused in midair, and then just squeezed the waterlogged sponge again. "I mean it."

"You are no fun," Ianto said conversationally. Jack ground backwards. "And you're crushing delicate parts of me."

Ah, well. Jack leant forward a bit, easing the pressure. He hadn't given much thought to the idea that Gretchen might want to go down there out of curiosity, or even to see if people were frightened. Jack had seen the small crowds gathering as they had left the TIC that afternoon, sitting in the oval basin or on the stairs, drinks and snacks on hand, getting ready for an evening show. None of them stayed to watch what scenes would be played out on the Plass in the dark. They'd _been_ those shows, and they'd seen plenty through the course of the day.

They should find that thing soon though, and they wouldn't even have to come up with an explanation for what had happened. If after a few days the ghosts never came back, the public would just shrug and chalk it up to the mysterious nature of the supernatural. Odd that they couldn't do that with aliens. But label something a ghost and suddenly people swallowed all kinds of tripe.

Which was funny since most people didn't like tripe.

"Hey," he said softly, staring at the dripping tap. "We never got that date." He waved a hand. "Well there was that French place, but they burnt the crème brulee and I forgot my wallet."

Ianto's hand left the edge of the tub and snagged a bar of soap, English Leather, and dunked it in the water by their legs before he dragged it over Jack's chest, drawing lazy circles with the corner of the bar. "Hmmmm," he said noncommittally. "Cheapskate."

"Now now—"

"Skinflint."

"That's cruel."

"Churl."

"Now who's been reading the dictionary?"

"Thesaurus."

Jack snorted. "Whatever. So how about it? This week, we go on the town."

"Is that wise?" Ianto soaped up both of his hands and slipped them down Jack's chest into the water.

Jack groaned and rolled his head on Ianto's shoulder. "Oh yeah. Imperative, even. Clamant, compulsory, critical, crucial, essential, exigent…"

"You know what else is clamant?" Ianto whispered, fingers sliding in the water.

"Oh."

 

  


* * *

 

Lois was tired and overheated from the blissfully wasteful shower she'd just taken, and now she was looking forward to popping some melatonin and sleeping until seven in the morning. She was sharing a room with Maggie, which was fine because they had separate beds and Maggie, unlike Dee, didn't snore.

Dinner had been a raucous pub affair, a wooden table crowded with what had started as the two of them and the young police constables but had expanded to a pair of firefighters and three local fisher…people. Two of them had been women, but they were married. To each other. Not that she was window-shopping. Besides, Lois was taken.

Lois made a mental note to ring Dor when she got up; she'd be going to bed when Lois was starting her day. Lois didn't know where this thing was going, but it was going somewhere, and she could at least water the plants when she thought about it.

Maggie looked up when she left the bathroom. She lay on her bed with her laptop open, and she was either working or playing a very fast game of FreeCell.

"So, do you want the fruits of our labours?" Maggie asked, saying 'fruits' like 'froo-itz.'

Lois sat on the edge of the bed and toweled her hair. "Hit me."

Maggie laughed. "It's salt."

Lois pulled the towel from her head and furrowed her brows. This had not been what she had anticipated. "That's. Okay, that was not what I was expecting. It's _covered_ in salt?"

Maggie snapped her fingers. "Ah ha. That would make sense, but no. Every two-inch punch sample is a hundred percent salt in and out. Sort of. It's sodium chloride, yeah, but also some potassium, calcium, magnesium, things like that. It's not the composition of the salt in seawater, but it's close, closer than oh, say, the Dead Sea." Lois snorted and Maggie closed her laptop, pulling her stay from her hair. "What?"

"You get the joke, don't you?" Lois asked, standing and hanging her towel on the drying rack. "Lot's wife, the Dead Sea, salt." Maggie's face said that she clearly didn't know. "The pillar of salt," Lois said.

Maggie nodded. "Yeah, out there in the water."

"No, from the Bible," Lois said slowly.

Maggie cocked her head. "Was the Isle of Wight in the Bible? I thought it all took place in like, Africa or something."

Lois blinked at her. "I forget that just because you're versed in Western culture doesn't mean that you know the Bible." She shook her head. "I don't know why I keep making that mistake."

Maggie closed her laptop and set it on the nightstand. "Christian privilege," she joked.

Lois smiled. "Okay, Fine. Sparknotes version--Lot is the nephew of Abraham, and he and his family live in Sodom, right?" She uncapped her lotion and started to oil down her legs. Maggie sat up and began brushing her hair. "So God doesn't approve of Sodom and Gomorrah because they're chockoblock with corruption, and he's going to destroy them, but he promises to check if there's anyone worth saving. He sends angels disguised as travellers."

"Like they wouldn't notice the big wings," Maggie said, rolling her eyes.

"I would think that they could hide those," Lois said. "So Lot takes them in and feeds and houses them, and then in the night, the men of Sodom come to his house and want Lot to send his guests outside so they can, uhm, rape them."

"Is this where the word 'sodomy' comes from?" Maggie asked suddenly.

"Yes."

"Then what's 'gomorrahy'?"

"Interrupting people in the middle of a story." Lois tugged on a pair of clean socks. Her feet always got cold. "Lot refuses and that's why the angels spare him and family. The thing is, while they're running from the city and it's being destroyed in a rain of fire and brimstone, the angels tell them not to look backwards. But Lot's wife is from there, and she can't help herself. She looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt."

"Harsh," Maggie said, shaking her head. "God's a right bastard."

Lois shrugged. "God was big on being obeyed then. In the end, though, she's a pillar of salt. That's probably why they named the old Needle that, because it looked like a pillar of salt. I think it's not the only thing named that." She pulled back the duvet and slapped the pillow with her hand. "It is funny, though, isn't it? That a thing named after a mythical pillar of salt would be made out of it."

"Oh," Maggie said then, rolling onto her stomach and picking up the remote control to the telly. "That does put a strange spin in it." She pressed a few buttons and Top Gear came on. "You know, maybe God put it there."

Lois narrowed her eyes at Maggie. It was hard to tell when she was taking the piss. "I don't know why God would put it there," she offered.

"Same as with the dinosaur bones, maybe?" Maggie smiled. "Red herring. Drive everyone batty."

 

  


* * *

 

Gwen rolled over and stared at the clock: eleven fifty-seven. Rhys snored beside her and she stared at the baby monitor, willing it to erupt. Nothing happened. Duncan was the best sleeper to ever sleep, apparently. He seemed to time his insomniac nights for when Gwen couldn't keep her eyes open.

She tossed the covers back and sat up. Rubbed her face. Glanced at the world from the corners of her eyes to see things that she knew weren't there. She was starting to go insane, maybe.

She'd tried to forget about the machine, the apparitions, but all day as they had looked for the Ghost Machine, Gwen had found herself stopping, staring when someone or something ran by her. A great deal of the time they were people she didn't recognise. And that made sense; the Hub had been there for ages. Jack hadn't had a good time of it, actually. A few times he had excused himself and gone off alone. Gwen didn't know where he'd gone, but she didn't blame him. A lot of the things in that Hub hadn't been good. She'd been there for some of them the first time.

Part of her wanted to leave it, just let the machine run, but there was the little matter of the apparitions spreading to the Plass, and Gwen knew that it couldn't go on like that. She stuffed her feet into her slippers and shuffled into the loo, closing the door and turning on the light to stare at herself in the mirror. She looked like hell. Splashing her face with water didn't make her feel or look any better.

Out in the bedroom Rhys stopped snoring, but there was no noise. He must have rolled to his side. Gwen sat on the toilet seat and closed her eyes, but behind the lids she saw the ghost of someone just out of view, too hazy to discern.

It was worrisome that the machine had such a large radius, that it was on, that it was interacting with the world like this. Gwen had visions of it damaged from the blast, fused to some other alien tech, and some detonator counting down to an explosion.

That was it, wasn't it?

She pulled her denims from the drying rack and tugged them on. She had to tiptoe out into the bedroom to find socks and a jumper, but she managed to suit up, grab her keys and slip out of the flat with a minimum of noise.

She should have left a note. Halfway to the Plass, she stopped at a red light to send a text to Rhys's phone. Then she sent one to Jack and Dee, letting them know where she was.

The whole area was deserted, of course, and she swung the small excavation bag she'd stowed in the boot of her car along in her hand as she walked. She unlocked the TIC noiselessly and then locked it behind her, punching in the security code on the keypad by the door before it set off the alarm in the new Hub and the Milligans' flat. She scribbled a brief note and left it on the desk, just in case she hadn't found the thing by the time they arrived in the morning. She didn't want Russ and Rachel coming down there guns blazing.

The image was humorous, if not a little alarming, surely.

The trip to the Hub was a short one, one she'd made so many times in the past without thinking. She almost wanted to swipe her card in the broken reader at the end, get it to open a wheel that didn't exist, but in the end, she settled for flipping all the power switches at the entrance and watching the auxiliary lighting illuminate the place better than it had ever been under normal circumstances. She slapped the paper mask over the lower half of her face before she went any further. There was still a lot of dust and particulate in the air, and she planned on kicking up more.

But first…

Owen sat on the phantom chair and stared at the phantom computer screen. It was hard to tell if he was working or watching porn. He had done both equally.

He glanced in the direction of Gwen's old desk and stared. Gwen followed his gaze and watched herself chewing on the tip of a pen as she studied papers in front of her. Owen licked his lips.

Gwen felt herself blush. She'd forgotten this part of their relationship. Or maybe she'd made peace with it, and she wasn't used to seeing it from the outside.

There was some scuffling to her left and she turned then in time to watch Suzie and Jack mock-fight over something. Jack wrested it from her hand, and licked it, and Suzie made a disgusted face, then bolted when Jack waved the thing at her, obviously trying to touch her with it. Nice to see that Jack still hadn't changed. Gwen'd watched him do that with Maggie last week over the last cheese danish in the box.

Gwen set down the excavation equipment and sat on the metal catwalk steps; Tosh smiled and thanked Ianto as he handed her a cup of coffee. It wouldn't hurt to watch for a while.

Ghost Gwen passed Ghost Owen the basketball.

 

  


* * *

 

The next night, a group of nearly thirty people sat in the oval basin, some in chairs. A few of them had bottles in brown paper bags. Two police constables stood off to one side, keeping an eye on the crowd in case they became unruly.

"I heard that it's all some sort of alien thing," Cora said as she handed her bottle to Huw. He took it and wiped the rim with his sleeve and she wanted to tell him to fuck off.

"Nah, they had a psychic down here yesterday and she said that it's residual aftershocks, and that this whole place is a graveyard."

"What," Cora said to the person behind her. "Like we're sitting on top of a bunch of dead bodies or summat?"

The person behind her opened a can of Pimm's and lemonade with a hiss. "Right. Like there was a secret military base under the Plass, and it exploded and killed everyone in there."

"I saw that movie," Huw mumbled.

Cora shook her head. "Oh come on, if there had been some sort of secret place under the Plass, we would have known, you know? You can't keep that secret." Something nagged at her and she stared at the water tower.

Huw opened his mouth but someone off the far left shouted. "It's started!" and they all turned their heads to see the spectral form of the bottle blonde girl (Cora called her _X-tina_ ) running down the Plass towards something. She had on a jumper and scarf, and looked right trashy, but Cora secretly wished she could get away with pigtails.

The girl ran as if she was being chased, or dodging something, and then she disappeared around the water tower, which was where all eyes were when the figures rose up from the ground as if they had been lifted on a platform, stumbling onto the paving stones.

And then the man in the suit hit the other one, and the crowd went wild.

 

  


* * *

 

Russ Milligan was a reasonable man, but the longer he watched Gwen Cooper sift through the wreckage on the CCTV cameras, the more he was thinking of ringing Johnson and Harkness. What was that called? An intervention? Rachel entered the back room, her arms full of a box of loving spoons; she glanced at the screens.

"You really should leave the poor woman alone," she clucked.

Russ raised an eyebrow and sipped his tea. "She's been down there for twenty-four hours. Came up to use the loo and nip out for a muffin and a coffee. She slept in the old conference room."

Rachel sighed. "I know. But I think it's a thing she has to get out of her system." She tsked. "Her whole team died so quickly, you know."

She had a point. Russ didn't like when his wife had a point that he had to acquiesce to, though why he would still care when he'd been doing nothing but giving in for thirty years was beyond him. Even coming back here had been a bit of acquiescence. Sure, he liked working for Torchwood again, but running a tourist office? It was the OED definition of boredom.

"I don't know," he said. "She doesn't seem to be getting the job done. Even with those scanners Dee dropped off the morning."

"Last night a reporter came in asking about the apparitions," Rachel said, setting the box down and picking up a loving spoon. She slapped the palm of her hand with it. "The Plass is getting unruly. I saw Rose Tyler on the video feeds from the basin last night."

Russ sipped his tea and shoved a hand in his pocket. Soon, it would start picking up more than Torchwood and TARDIS-related ghosts. In fact, that the Plass hadn't been crawling with ghosts, given the history of the docks alone, was actually a miracle. He wondered if there was a reason the ghosts were all recent incarnations.

"How long before we start seeing ghosts up here?"

Rachel turned red. "Well, I didn't want to say anything but…"

There was a moan from the main lobby of the tourist office. Russ parted the beaded curtain and stared out at the desk before letting go and turning back.

"Harkness, you are a cad."

 

  


* * *

 

The boat came around for another pass and Lois had half an eye on the formations and the other half on the setting sun. They'd been out here for hours, first waiting for divers and then trying to negotiate the waves and the cold and the wind and all that other stuff that Crispin had explained to them but at which Lois had just nodded. Apparently February was not the best time to be doing any of this.

Maggie sat on the deck, her head swathed in a scarf, tips of her fingers poking from the ends of her cut-off gloves as she tried to work the camera equipment. It was almost too dark to see at this point, and Lois was sure that they were going to have to pack it in soon. They had rooms at a Bed and Breakfast, and it wasn't as if they had to be back on the road the next day. Gwen had given them an open window.

Maggie hit the screen and the boat tossed a bit. "This thing is shite in—it's too cold," she said. Lois shivered and thought about ducking into the cabin with Bubbers for some shelter from the wind.

PC Crispin sat next to Maggie and spoke into the mike attached to his head. "Paul, just bring the samples back up and come in." He looked at Maggie. "We're losing light and it's too cold for him to be in there that long."

Lois nodded. He was the expert, not them. "We'll try again tomorrow for better shots."

They still didn't have good underwater shots of the pillar, but the diver, Paul, had been able to take more samples from the pillar above and below the water. Normally, they might have been able to get close to the pillar in a small boat like a rowboat, but the waters were rough. Paul followed the line in with the camera; Lois watched his shadow progress on the screen.

"We have the imaging," Lois said. "That'll keep us busy, right?"

Maggie smiled. "Should do."

Crispin tapped the screen and smiled. "Good work today, yeah?"

Lois shivered and internally thanked Maggie for making her buy clothes before they left for Wight. This coat was much better than the one she'd brought, with a drawstring at the bottom to pull tight so the wind didn't rush up from below. Her leather gloves had been good for urban errand running, but she needed something lined for this place.

She glanced at the Needle poking out of the water, white and tall and thin, standing there so innocent and all, until you realised that it had virtually appeared overnight. Nothing in nature did that. Well, this thing shouldn't have. They'd leave it at that for the moment

Paul climbed up the small ladder on the side of the boat, and Crispin and Maggie joined him to pull the camera equipment up. Maggie handled the cameras gingerly, wiping them down and packing them away, though Lois knew they'd break it down later and make sure that it was clean and clear inside. Bubbers started the engine and began the course back to the bay dock. Good thing, as well. Lois was starving.

"Where are you two staying again?" Crispin asked as Paul wrapped himself in a towel and ducked into the cabin to warm up.

"Frenchman's Cove," Lois told him, boxing up the plastic sample cases that Paul had given them. They had a portable lab in the SUV, and when they were alone they'd break out the tech. Tomorrow. Or at least after they got something to eat.

Her stomach wrapped around her spine and threatened to consume her liver.

Maggie finished the last of the clasps on the camera cases and shoved her hands in her pockets. "Hey Crispy, can we go back in tomorrow?" she asked. "I have SCUBA certification, but not the equipment."

Crispin's head bobbed noncommittally. "You're the boss," he said. They pulled into the dock. "I can get you the number of a supplier, if you have the cash."

Lois smiled. They had the cash.

"Stellar," Maggie said brightly. "Now how about we buy you all supper?"

Yup, Torchwood cash: greasing all the wheels.

 

  


* * *

 

Gwen took a break around six, according to her watch. She'd been searching for at least a day, maybe longer; she'd only slept one night and not very well. She took off her mask and sat in the remains of the atrium, digging in her bag for a bottle of water and a PowerBar.

PowerBars were horrible, but she didn't want to have to go up and get anything to eat. Leaving the Hub meant that she had to make the long walk back down from the tourist office, and then into the sub-levels where she was currently scavenging. Ianto obviously had some sort of system that probably had made sense before the whole place had been blown sky-high and then rifled through by special ops and then later Gwen's team. And then, probably secretly, by UNIT. And MI-5. And the CIA. And the KGB.

The levels weren't quite so much demolished as they were shaken up. There were whole rows of untouched or empty filing cabinets. Then there were capsized shelves and empty boxes and rooms filled with junk that looked as if someone had picked up the whole room and shaken it like a snowglobe. Most of this probably should have been moved to the new Hub, but Gwen had started to look at it like data on an old laptop--you got the new one, and you intended on moving everything over, but you found that you didn't miss the old data, and so you never got around to it. Occasionally you went back to the old laptop and found things, but it was still not worth the effort of transport.

She'd used all the scanners she knew how to use. Most of them were what she would call quasi-helpful, in the manner of making lots of noise and giving her a good idea of where things were _not_. Gwen took a long swig of water and watched Owen spin in his chair. It was funny, how before, the Ghost Machine (if this was what this was, and Gwen was willing to bet good money it was) had simply illuminated emotionally-charged moments, but now it was just picking things out of time. There couldn't be that much emotional about Owen spinning in his chair.

Still, it was comforting, watching him there, watching Tosh at her workstation, watching Ianto flit about the Hub, Jack sometimes manifesting in his office. Gwen found that she liked to sit there and watch. She'd dozed on the stairs this afternoon, propped up against the railing, knowing they were moving all about her.

She didn't want to think about what she was doing too much. Funny how every time she started to, she had a new idea of where to look for the Ghost Machine.

Tosh got up from her chair and walked over to Owen's station and smacked him in the back of the head.

Gwen laughed and broke a piece off her PowerBar. Owen gave her desk the V, and she realised that GhostHer must have laughed as well. She glanced at the bare ruins of what would have been her desk. She wasn't going to be jealous of herself. That was crazy.

One of the scanners went off, and Gwen started. She'd not known how to use that one; really, it was a box in which a bunch of marbles was suspended inside some thick yellow honey-like goo. But now, the marbles lit up and drifted to one of the corners of the box. Gwen shoved her PowerBar remnant in her mouth and picked up the box. The marbles shifted when she turned it, as if they were pointing in a direction, like a compass needle. Gwen shook it, and the marbles clinked about before sliding back to the corner.

Huh. "Okay," she said, and the sound of her voice was rough and startling. Gwen wasn't one to talk to herself, so she probably hadn't said anything for over twenty-four hours.

Sure, she could ask Dee to help her. She could even wait for Maggie and Lois, or ask Russ and Rachel to help her. She wasn't sure why, but that seemed horribly inappropriate, as inappropriate as asking Jack to come down here. He would have done it, but there was only so much a person should have to be confronted with, and naked hide and seek with your dead lover was just—

Well.

The marble-box led her down three levels into G section, and she stood there and tried to understand what the compass was telling her to do. A woman dressed in old-fashioned clothes walked by, but that was her thing. She walked by. Gwen suspected she was Harriet Derbyshire, but it was hard to tell. With that updo, all the women looked the same.

The marbles swirled and then pointed up; Gwen followed until she came to a wall with a ventilation shaft. That put a damper on things.

It was waist-height, and when she shone her torch in, it was clear of debris. The marbles all clacked against the glass when she set the box down in the shaft, and then she pushed it forward with her hand as she crawled along. It was a big shaft, or maybe she was just a small person.

The shaft bowed and dented under her knees. In the films they always didn't always hold people's weight, and Gwen wondered what was under her. If it gave way, she could fall five or five hundred meters. Oh come on, five hundred meters was a bit much. Oh, no, secret alien-fighting base, the occasional bending of time and space.

The marbles continued to point her forward until the shaft split at a T-junction, and the marbles shot to the left with a glass-cracking sound. Gwen came to another shaft cover, and, beyond it, through the cover slats, she could see a faint electrical light.

All right then. She pulled the grating from the shaft wall and poked her head in, looking down at the glow.

"Oh, that explains it."

 

  


* * *

 

Cora waved to Huw across the Plass, but it was hard to get through the crowd. About two hundred people milled about in the near-dark, checking and rechecking cameras, chatting merrily, passing an inflated beach ball around over everyone's heads. Cora had been holding their spot for ages.

Huw handed her the pasty bag when he finally got there. "They're lamb," he said, "but they're hot."

Cora opened the grease-spotted bag and ripped into the pasty. "You don't like lamb? Everyone likes lamb."

Huw shuddered. "Grew up on a farm."

Cora opened her mouth to say something around the food in it, but she was distracted. There was a strange sound, like grinding gears or a wind up engine, and the crowd fell silent as the air around the mysterious middle paving stone shivered and rippled, solidifying into a blue box. A police box. The door opened and a man stuck his head out. His eyes widened at the crowd of people staring at him, and he shook his head.

"Right. Come back later, then."

He shut the door, and they all watched the box begin to disappear as the light on top blinked blue and the rotor noise blared again. When it disappeared, the man in the suit rose up through the ground and straightened his tie. Cora lifted her video camera.

Showtime.

 

  


* * *

 

"Well, do you know when Gwen will be available?" Lois said into the phone and rolled her eyes at Maggie. Maggie tinkered with the portable lab in the back of the SUV whilst they waited for Crispin and Bubbers.

Dee sighed. "I don't know. She's been searching for that tech for two days. Harkness and I've been at the Hub, minding the store. Looking for a new medic, actually. UNIT offered one."

Lois rolled her eyes. "A UNIT medic, that sounds un-tempting."

"Not arguing that," Dee answered. "Maybe in the interim until Cooper finds her special someone. You know how she is."

Lois watched Maggie lick the sample with the tip of her tongue and make a face. "Yeah, I think we all know about the I-Ching of Cooper."

"How's it going there?" Dee asked suddenly. "A giant cock grew out of the water—"

Lois smiled and kicked the tyre. "It's like my worst nightmare." They both laughed roughly, a shared joke, _ha ha, Lois is a lesbian, how droll_ , and Maggie cocked her head and mouthed, "Gwen?" Lois shook her head in negative and Maggie reached out for the phone.

"Hold on, Mum, Mags wants to—hey!" Lois rubbed her arm where Maggie had punched her and watched her put the receiver to her ear.

"Dee, are you guys truly having that much trouble finding the thing? Did you use the Grav-pulse Scanner? What about the M-tron array sensor? And that….thing. The one I don't have a name for yet but looks like a box of marbles in amber?" Maggie sat on the end of the hatchback and swung her legs as she listened. "Uh huh. Right. Well, hold on." She pressed the phone to her coat and looked at Lois. "Do you think we're done here?"

Lois thought about it. So far they had samples from the pillar and underwater photos of varying qualities. They had a 3D rendering of the whole pillar both above and below the water, multiple filter scans in infrared and UV. They even found a small message carved into the pillar about a foot above the high water mark, in some script Maggie was working on translating.

"I think so."

Maggie bit her lip. "It would be helpful to go back and return with different equipment. Plus, hey, Ghost Hub."

Lois smiled. They were more than a little excited at the idea of Ghost Hub. She didn't know what Maggie's excuse was, but Lois was nosy, and the idea that she'd be able to see Doctor Harper or Toshiko Sato in action (Ghost Action!) was exciting. It had even made the news, and they had watched the report on the telly last night whilst sitting in their room, all but bouncing with excitement. Ghost Hub.

Plus, Lois would get to see the Milligans again, and that was always a plus. The Milligans' circumstances gave her hope regarding her own contract.

PC Crispin pulled up to the car park in his beat-up pickup and waved through the open window. Maggie returned the wave and beamed. Lois knew Maggie liked Crispin, in that 'it's safe to flirt with you because this will never go anywhere' way, and they had become fast companions, fortunate when you were stuck on a boat for hours on end. Lois had even heard her call him 'Crispy'.

"Okay, Dee, we'll pack it in here and be on our way tonight." She raised her eyebrows at Lois, who gave her the high sign. It was all fine with her. She had become auxiliary on this trip, which hadn't been entirely unanticipated. And whilst Lois could only imagine what her desk must look like by now, she told herself that no matter what time they got back tonight, she would not touch it until tomorrow morning when she came in at the normal time.

Her desk was probably a war zone. With no Gwen putting in a steady presence, Dee and Captain Harkness had probably run the place ragged. Let it go to seed. Her mouth twitched just thinking about it.

"We'll finish up all our stuff here and be off the island in about…" Maggie looked at her watch. "Six hours?" She paused. "Sure. Tomorrow morning."

Maggie hung up and tossed the phone back to Lois. "I think they're falling apart without us," she said.

"I would hope so," Lois returned. In her head, she was already making their shove-off list. They had to go back to the bed and breakfast and pack, secure all the equipment for the trip back, and then return the unused diving gear. God, they had a lot to do.

Crispin walked up and ogled the portable lab in the back of the SUV. He poked at a centrifuge. "You are seriously tricked out here. Black ops, man."

Lois smirked. "We got the hookup." And as an afterthought, "Yo."

 

  


* * *

 

Dee and Harkness sat on the abandoned café chairs in front of the Costa. It was fairly cold, but the sun was out, and on the way back from checking a reading in Roath, they had decided that come hell or high water they were going to take a break and sit outside with some caffeine.

"It's been three days down there," Dee said. "I thought that PC was with her, but he just rang the main line to ask her if she'd found it yet." She sipped from her cappuccino. This was more like it. Oh, blessed tiny Italian man who made this.

Harkness shrugged and sipped his own coffee, making a face. That's what you got when you ordered the house blend from the carafe. "She's the boss. It's a slow job anyway, and she has those scanners."

It was hard to tell what he was thinking. Harkness had been busy, they both had, playing with some Butetown slime molds, and then an infestation of pitbullfrogs, and then last (but never least) getting into Haz-Mat suits and cleaning up a nest of dead weevils they'd missed in the great armour fiasco of December. Dee hadn't minded any of it, especially not Cooper checking in by phone every morning, because she figured it was the best allocation of resources until Lois and Maggie returned. It looked like that was to be sooner rather than later, and based on this morning's call from PC Davidson, that wasn't such a bad thing.

"I don't think it's healthy for her to be down there by herself with all those…apparitions."

"They're not ghosts."

Dee shook her head and stuck her finger across the foam on her coffee. Hello, lovely unflavoured milk foam. "I don't care what they are, Harkness, and I don't care that Russ has been checking up on her. Come tomorrow, one of us is replacing her." She looked at her nails; her manicure was shot and she wasn't going to be able to get another one in time. Ah, Sten wasn't going to be looking at her nails anyway.

"Look, Gwen rang me this morning. She's made it down to the G levels of the archives in the sub-basement, and that's all secure." He pulled the cardboard sleeve from his cup and folded it in half. "I say let her do it. Maybe it's a quest."

Dee rolled her eyes. "You're not afraid to go down there, are you?"

Harkness blew on his coffee and turned a bit in his wire chair. A gust of wind cut up her sleeve and she shivered. "I'm not afraid. I just know that when Gwen has a bug up her arse about something…" He stopped. "No, let me rephrase." He set his coffee down. "Gwen isn't just down there for the machine, and you know it. I know it. Give her time."

Dee leant forward. "It's not healthy."

Harkness snorted and stared out at the cars parked along the street. "Why does everything have to be fucking healthy all the time?" he complained, the curse rare and pungent from his lips. "Why can't people be allowed to have flaws?" He stared at her. "I wasn't there for her after—well." He shifted in his chair. "Just give her time."

"All right," Dee groused, "It can wait till tomorrow when Mags and Lois get back. But only because I have a date tonight."

Harkness sat back and smiled, putting his arms behind his head. "Funny. So do I."

 

  


* * *

 

They were passing New Forest and Sowley Pond when Maggie noticed that Lois was yawning.

"Do you need to stop?"

Lois made a face. "Nonsense. I'm tired, not dead on my feet. And this isn't cross-country or anything."

Maggie just shrugged and glanced at her PDA. "If you want me to drive, I'm more than happy."

"No thank you."

The drive had been long and irritating. Lois had got them lost, which was amusing since Wight wasn't that large, and also because she'd given Maggie a hard time for getting them lost on their way to the bay just days before. Now, they made their way through the dark, and by the time they got back to Cardiff it'd be ten or so. Maggie didn't have a car, so Lois would drop her off at her flat. But Lois had to take the SUV back to the Hub to get her own car, and Maggie suspected that if Lois set foot in the building, she'd be distracted and wouldn't go home until one in the morning.

She tapped a few more letters of code in and thought about asking Lois to take her to the Hub and drive her home on her own way just so that she could prevent the massive overworking that was sure to take place. Lois needed someone to look out for her sometimes.

Maybe she should email Dor for her.

"Are you any closer to figuring out that message?" Lois asked.

Maggie sighed. "I have something, but I don't think it's right."

"Hit me."

Maggie scrolled back up. _"We hit it oops our bad substitute yes yes break the shell."_

Lois cleaned the windshield and smirked as the wipers squeaked back and forth a few times. "And they say that grammar is eroding," she mumbled.

Maggie laughed. "I think my babelfish program needs tweaking. It's in Plinji. They have fifteen hundred different words for everything." She blinked. "Imagine fifteen hundred words for cream puff." Her stomach rumbled.

Lois glanced at her. "Well, maybe they're saying they hit it and they've just now replaced it."

That was something. Maggie stared at the words. "Possibly, though that was two hundred years ago. And what's this about 'breaking a shell'?"

"That's the third one," Lois groused as a car passed them. "Why do they keep flashing their brights at me?"

Maggie was about to say something when they turned a corner in the A road and the deer came from nowhere, stopping halfway on the tarmac. Lois swerved the wheel but it was too late; the SUV plowed right into the thing as it tried to cross the road at the last minute.

Maggie heard herself scream and her hands flew up to her face. This was how it was going to end, she realised, in a car, just like Brian. It was fitting and poignant and—

There was a horrible up-and-down sensation as the car went over something while it barrelled forward, and Lois regained control of the wheel, pulling the vehicle over to the side of the road.

They sat there in the darkness, the engine purring, the headlights shining directly into a bunch of tall hedges. Maggie's chest thudded so hard and fast that she wasn't sure she wasn't having some sort of coronary. Her hands had lowered from in front of her face, but one clutched her PDA so tightly her fingers had curled in against the LCD screen and left dimples from her nails.

"Oh my god," she breathed. "Oh Jesus."

"Are you okay?" Lois asked. Maggie stared out the windshield at the bushes in front of the car and blinked, forcing herself to breathe.

She wasn't Brian, and fate wasn't like that. She was alive. This was an accident. People had them every day. Every day and they lived. Sometimes.

Maggie hadn't hit her head on anything, but she hadn't seen if Lois had, though if she had, the airbag surely would have gone off. And if it should have, then she and Dee needed to address that issue.

Lois's hands were glued to the wheel, and she stared at them as she unpeeled each finger separately. "I think so. I hit it."

"Yeah," Maggie said, leaning forward to put one hand on the dash; her fingers ached as they uncurled. "You did."

The engine cut out when Lois turned it off and they sat there listening to the ticking of the motor resting. Maggie looked in the side mirror and couldn't see anything, but she didn't have a good view with the car being half off the road. Lois pressed her forehead to the top bow of the steering wheel and closed her eyes.

"I've never hit anything before," Lois said softly.

"It was an accident," Maggie told her, and in her ears it sounded familiar and hollow. "Come on."

They got out of the car and rounded the back, and Maggie braced herself for something grisly. The SUV had gone over the deer, so it was bound to be mangled. She didn't know if something as heavy as the car running over a body would make it…burst, but she prepared herself for the possibility.

She needn't have bothered. The poor thing lay on its side, unmoving and so hopefully dead, but intact. Lois made a noise in the back of her throat when she saw it, and Maggie sighed. "Well, it's dead," she said, nudging it with her toe. The thing was a little twisted, and its back legs bent at a bad angle. Maggie wasn't sure she wanted Lois to look too closely at the thing; there was something about being confronted with a corpse you had made. Maggie didn't like being confronted with _any_ corpse, but animals made it less distressing.

Maggie popped the boot and dug about in one of the utili-boxes for a pair of thick leather gloves.

"What are we supposed to do? Just leave it here on the side of the road?" Lois waved her hands. "Just hit and run? Shouldn't we ring the constabulary?"

Maggie stared at the poor mangled thing and tugged on the hazard gloves. "Well we can't leave it in the road. Ring the police when we're back in the car, I suspect. The SUV might not even be drivable."

Lois glanced back at the vehicle and Maggie realised that she hadn't even thought of that. "Oh Lord. Dee's going to kill me."

Maggie reached down and grabbed the back legs of the deer. It was a small thing, a Muntjac deer; the SUV had gone right over it. She could only hope that death had been instant. Her stomach flipped as she stared at its glassy lifeless eyes and she knew that hadn't been true.

 

  


* * *

 

The chef was being adventuresome with the foie gras, but this gastrique was sad. It might have used figs, but it was unidentifiable under this horrid cranberry foam decorating her plate. Dee pushed at the foam with her fork and wondered at this modern gastronomic urge to _foam_ everything. It looked like a mess of red spit on her plate.

Aaaaaaand now that she thought that she couldn't finish it. Dee set her fork down and sighed.

Sten Harrison (Commander, but not tonight. Tonight he was, 'Call me Sten') looked up from his perusal of the wine list. "Everything all right?"

She smiled. "Yes. Just too much foie gras." She snorted. "I didn't know one could have too much foie gras, but apparently so."

The corner of Sten's mouth quirked in a small smile. "Too heavy, I think. They were overly generous."

The sommelier interrupted them to discuss drinking choices, and she left it to Sten. She'd never been a wine person, but she would drink whatever was put in front of her.

"So I've been thinking," Sten said as he sipped his wine and glanced out over the small dining room. "Perhaps you could speak to Director Cooper on behalf of UNIT."

Dee painted on a smile. It figured that this was the point of this date—business. He was so not getting laid.

Well, okay, _maybe_.

Dee turned the stem of her glass around. "Really? What makes you think that I would have any sway at all?"

Sten paused whilst the servers brought the second course, something with quail and chestnuts. Dee nodded to herself. She had to admit, she had a thing for tiny food—squab, finger sandwiches, little biscuits, even those hot wings that Harkness sometimes brought back from that American place. She liked mini-foods.

"I know you have more influence than I do, and I know you need a medic." Sten picked at his quail. "Admit it, though--wouldn't it be easier for all around if you had another soldier in there? Torchwood is full of…individuals."

She gave him points for class without class. "I'll see what I can do," she capitulated, eager to get the conversation over with.

Sten smiled, and she took a second to admire his handsome face. Handsome men weren't rare for her, but she hadn't had one in a while. Had one, like he was a dessert or—

Well, maybe.

The rest of the dinner went without a hitch. Dee hadn't been on a date in two years, and even back when she had been on the dating scene, it had barely been as an adult. Some stiff chaperoned dates with the lads in school, a plethora of balls and the like for the makeshift setting that passed for a modern "Season", and when she was at Uni, a bunch of rebellious dates that consisted of the all-night campus falafel stand and fifty P bottles of wine, ending with sticky fumbling in someone's dormitory room.

It helped that she and Sten had the military in common. Well, UNIT and…not UNIT, but close enough. Most of the dinner had been spent discussing RPGs and IEDs. The rest of it had been spent talking about food, cars, and, much to her surprise, their shared fondness for Billy Joel. If he hadn't been so candidly eager about his enthusiasm for _Only The Good Die Young_ , she would have thought it was too convenient.

"Back to this UNIT liaison idea," Dee said suddenly, unearthing the subject to better catch Sten off guard. He blinked and set down his fork. "You do realise that any person hired by Torchwood would be expected to be loyal to Torchwood." She smiled. "There are protocols and contracts to be signed."

Sten nodded. "I wouldn't have it any other way," he said smoothly. "I'm just thinking of how UNIT could make Torchwood run smoother. I'm sure you'd do the same for us."

Dee was fairly sure that was not remotely the case in either direction. However, she liked Sten, and they had a great deal in common. He could be trying to fool her, but she wasn't so sure. Sten had to know that going through proper channels was the best way to accomplish these things, so even though he'd mentioned it, she had to believe that he had asked her out for purely personal reasons.

And even if he hadn't, she had no compunctions about taking advantage of it.

The dining room was full; the reservations had all probably been made a month in advance, rare for Cardiff nightlife, if Dee understood correctly. She let her eyes roam along the tables, staring at the suits and dresses. It was almost all couples: suit, dress; suit, dress; suit, dress; suit, suit--two men making their way out of the dining area to the coat check. Well, that was different. That was charming. That was--

Dee set her napkin on the table and stood. Sten scrambled to his feet. The two men left the restaurant, arm in arm.

"Excuse me," she said, without looking back. "I have to go."

 

  


* * *

 

That had been the best dinner she'd had in ages. Perhaps ever. Gretchen hung up her coat on the peg in the hallway and watched Jack do the same. It was strange to not have to look up at him, but just across.

More and more Ianto Jones was becoming comfortable. Jack was familiar. Gretchen felt at ease with him, and a few times she had forgotten that she wasn't normally a man.

It should have been more disconcerting. She had read about body switching in the Torchwood archives--even Ianto Jones had been swapped with a woman for a while--and all the reports said that it was disorientating. Gretchen felt as if she were playing a part, a part that she was very good at. No matter what behaviour of Jones she guessed at, Jack seemed to buy it. Perhaps it was the knowledge that she could be herself any time she wanted. Maybe it was that the very air around Jack tasted like the foie gras she'd had for starters. Gretchen felt, for the first time in months, at peace and relaxed, no longer scratching and scrabbling in the dirt for her next meal.

She hadn't been to the hospital all week, let alone a graveyard, and just the thought of it made her giddy.

Rickenbacher pulled all his toys out to see them, and Jack bent over to accept the squeaky banana. His tie dragged on the ground a little bit and Gretchen reached up to loosen hers. She didn't know how men did it. It felt as if someone continually had their hands on her throat.

Jack tugged the banana free and tossed it into the other room, turning to Gretchen with a face of distaste. He rubbed his thumb and fingers together. "Dog spit."

Gretchen smiled. "I'm sure." She sidled closer and pulled at Jack's tie. "Looks like he's marked the tie, as well."

Jack glanced down and then back up at her, closing the distance until Gretchen could virtually press herself against him. "Yeah," he mumbled, eyes flicking from her lips to her throat and then up to her eyes. "Well, he—"

Gretchen pressed her mouth to his, tugging Jack's tie to her chest and biting at his lip. One of Jack's hands went about her waist, the other up to the side of her neck. Gretchen inhaled through her nose and wondered at the smell of him, and whether or not she could get high from that alone. Inside her the symbiote seemed to roll like a cat in a plate of catnip.

Her fingers let go of the tie and travelled along his shoulders, taking off the suit jacket and dropping it on the sofa. They slipped off their shoes whilst still standing, and Gretchen sucked in a breath as Jack's hands fell to her belt and worked at the buckle, fingers undoing the flies so they could dart in to her shorts and grasp her. Oh dear god, that was a nice thing about being a man, Gretchen decided.

Fuck you, Freud.

There was a knock on the door, and Rickenbacher proved himself to be the worst guard dog ever by running under the sofa. Gretchen groaned and Jack bit her earlobe, sighing.

"That's shit timing," Jack said. "You expecting anyone?"

Gretchen waved him to the door. "No, but get rid of them," she mumbled as she tried to zip her flies. She couldn't very well answer the door like this—Ianto Jones was dead, and then if she had to become Gretchen again she'd have to explain where Ianto Jones went and, oh, it was just a mess. It was easier for Jack to get the door, tell whoever to piss off and—

Jack opened the door and backed up when the gun followed him in. Gretchen froze in the lounge doorway and Jack stepped backwards, trying to angle his body so that he was in front of Gretchen. The gun flowed into a coat-covered arm, then a shoulder, and finally, Dee. Dee. Oh, shit.

"Deirdre," Jack said jovially, "fancy you coming here—"

"Stuff it, Harkness." Dee's eyes slid from his face to Gretchen's behind him, and then her gun followed. "This doesn't strike me as a good idea." Gretchen could feel her heart skipping beats. In front of her, Jack held up both of his hands.

"Dee," he began, "this is not only none of your business, but it's perfectly—"

"Yeah, just not seeing it," Dee interrupted, eyes on Jack, but gun on Gretchen. "That's not Jones."

Funny how she and Ianto had the same last name. Along with about forty percent of Wales, probably. Gretchen had never thought of it before.

Jack lowered his hands. "Oh, you have no idea." He glanced at Gretchen over his shoulder, eyes lingering on her face for a split second. "The jig is up."

Gretchen looked from Dee to Jack and felt the suit get larger, the collar bigger. One hand went to grab the belt just in case the trousers were too big. She picked at the tie knot with the other hand. Dee's eyes widened and she wavered the gun for just a second before lowering it.

"That is not what I expected…" she said, drifting off, still staring at Gretchen.

"Yeah," Gretchen found herself saying. "I think we're all looking at this thing differently at the moment."

Something clicked in her chest when she met Jack's eyes. The look he gave her was nothing like it had been five minutes ago, when she'd looked like another person. When she'd _been_ another person.

 

  


* * *

 

Maggie stared at the deer carcass on the side of the road and Lois plugged her free ear as she talked on the phone. She was making sound but Maggie wasn't listening. She stared at the back legs of the deer, crossed in a bizarre way from when she'd laid it down.

"Yes, we can wait," Lois said into the phone. Maggie sighed and leant against the back of the SUV.

She didn't know what they would have to do, and she was sure they wouldn't be in any sort of trouble, but this was just another thing to delay them. Maggie pulled off her glove and scraped at a hangnail with her bottom teeth. Oh, it wasn't as if they were going to get back in time to do anything useful anyway.

She wished she had some tea.

Lois closed her mobile and leant against the back of the SUV next to her. "They're on their way. I think they want to make sure it's dead and that we don't take the carcass."

"Why would we take the carcass?"

Lois shrugged. "Venison?"

Maggie blinked. "Why would we call them to report it if we had just planned on taking the carcass?"

Lois shrugged, identical to the last, as if she had a twitch. "I dunno. I didn't ask." She scuffed her shoe on the pavement. "Lord, I could use a drink."

Maggie nodded. "Amen to that."

The night around them was pitch, no lamps, but the sky was full of stars and a sliver of moon like a lemon peel. Something made a mournful sound off in the woods. Maggie wondered if the deer had a mate, if that was how deer worked. Was its deer family watching from the edge of the forest, horrified, but unable to come out with her and Lois there?

Gretchen had told her once that humans needlessly anthropomorphised animals, and she blamed Disney movies, but Maggie had never seen a Disney movie. More likely humans just liked the idea that animals had feelings as well. Strange, how that didn't keep them from eating them.

"I'm still boggling about that message on the pillar," Lois said, crossing her arms. Maggie didn't blame her for being eager to talk about something else. "What d'you think it means?"

Maggie shrugged and wondered if it was a communicable twitching disease. "Dunno. The first part is easy. 'We knocked it down.' I guess we should assume the 'we' is aliens." She glanced at Lois. "I mean, who else could it be?"

Lois nodded. "Right. There wasn't any Rift energy, but the Rift doesn't extend out this far, and it's not the only way that aliens get here."

Maggie blinked. "True. I keep forgetting that aliens apparently come here all the time, and we are blissfully unaware."

They stood there in silence, staring at the deer, until Lois cleared her throat. "I know this sounds horrible, but I'm rather glad that it's just dead," she said softly. "I was worried we'd have to shoot it, or that it would still be alive, but disemboweled or something."

Maggie tilted her head. "Gretchen always said that skin was tougher than it seemed," she offered. "You know, it's on the outside, it has to be tough because…"

Oh.

"Well, yeah, I gather, but still that was a two-tonne vehicle that ran over…why are you smiling?"

"I figured it out," she said. "We have to go back to Wight."

 

  


* * *

 

"It was built to commemorate the new millennium. Yet over a year and a half ago, the Roald Dahl Plass was decimated by an underground explosion. While the cause of that blast is still unclear and widely speculated upon, the Plass has since been rebuilt, burying its secrets with it. No one should be the wiser, but the violence of that September day remains, in the form of spectral plays enacted here, on and around this set of paving stones in front of the reconstructed water tower."

Jack flipped his collar up and was glad that he wasn't wearing the greatcoat anymore, because he would never have made it through the throng of people unrecognised. And there was a throng.

The reporter was standing in front of the water tower. The crowd had brought chairs. Jack wondered if the Ghost Machine was on a timer or a schedule that it only showed these scenes at this time. Maybe it had a perimeter that it swept.

In any case he wasn't keen on seeing the show, not _that_ show. He wasn't too keen on seeing any of these things, but Dee had given him The Look right before she'd left and reminded him where Gwen was.

He was going to have to sit Dee down and tell her everything, if there was an everything to tell. She'd followed them from the restaurant, and hadn't that been bad luck. Jack wondered sometimes if there wasn't such a thing as fate. What were the odds that they would have been at the same place in a city full of perfectly adequate restaurants?

The one good thing about Torchwood was that it was easier for everyone to swallow impossible things, and Dee had already known about Gretchen and the symbiote. Adding shapeshifting abilities to the mix just made her shrug and draw her own conclusions. Jack was going to have to make sure that she didn't bother Gretchen over it, but it was a safe bet that she'd leave it alone.

His chest felt tight, and he told himself that it was all the fat in the pate, but the reality was that Gretchen had pushed him out the door and blinked after Dee had left, her brown eyes painted with something he didn't want to recognise (but did, deep down he knew what she was feeling). He had let her shake her head and close the door and knew that she was telling him something.

Jack wasn't sure what he thought about that. But in the end, he knew that this had to end somewhere else. Maybe that somewhere else was under the ground below him.

Russ met him at the door to the TIC. Jack'd rung him when he realised that he didn't have the security codes to the lower level, and he didn't want to trigger some sort of alarm. He should have made Dee come with him. If he hadn't anticipated some emotional moment, he probably would have.

"It's about time," Russ mumbled when he unlocked the door.

Jack waved a hand. "Don't start. I'm here."

Russ opened his mouth to say something but then shut it again, slamming his palm on the access button. Jack laid his coat and suit coat on the counter. No sense in everything getting filthy. Dress clothes weren't the best choice for a jaunt down into ruined Ghost Hub, but he hadn't wanted to go anywhere to change. Russ grumbled under his breath.

Jack ambled down the long hallway, ears already on alert for phantoms. They couldn't touch him. They didn't even know he was there, but the damage they did was as intangible as they were. Being down here was not unlike being a frog in a pot of slowly heating water.

Gwen sat on one of the ledges and watched Ianto feed dead fish to Myfanwy. Jack had forgotten about her. He realised that he hadn't ever gone in to see her since he'd started to work for Torchwood, and maybe that was because she actually belonged to Ianto.

He walked along the grating, remembering that he'd not taken a hard hat, but that Gwen didn't have one either. Not wise on her part. He tried to make noise as he moved, so that she didn't startle, and when she turned her head to glance at him, she didn't seem surprised to see him. Though she did smile at his tie with raised brows as he lowered himself down to sit on the ledge with her.

The image of Ianto and Myfanwy faded into another tableau of them all fighting over something. Owen raised a gun and shot Ghost Jack in the chest, and then kept firing again and again. Jack and tapped his chest with his fingers. Those bullets were so long gone they never existed.

"So," he said, trying to think where to begin. Probably at the beginning, that would be cracker. "Uhm."

Good start, Harkness.

Gwen picked at his trousers. "You're all posh tonight. Russ ring you?"

Jack slapped at her hand. "Dee guilted me into inquiring as to your whereabouts. I rang Rhys. He said you'd been on stakeout for the past two nights."

Gwen shrugged. "I know."

Jack picked at his nails. "You know that's not exactly what we meant when we all agreed to be truthful to each…I've been seeing Gretchen," he finished.

Gwen glanced at him. "Really now?"

He sighed. "She does a…she's a. It's over."

"Gretchen's…you admit that she might have ulterior motives for being interested in you," Gwen said. Statement, not a question. Jack watched her fiddle with a bottlecap in her hand. Her fringe hid her eyes from this view. He loosened his tie, pulling it down until it was nooselike. He was a schoolboy skiving off.

"Yeah, we have an understanding." He laughed. "Had, I think." He turned to her then, ignoring what he knew was Ianto slow dancing with Toshiko on her birthday. "This isn't real, Gwen. None of this."

Gwen's eyes were riveted to Owen's hands on her Ghost arse. Jack cocked his head and wondered why he'd never picked up on the two of them sooner. "I know," she said. "It's just. Sometimes I think I miss it. Being down here."

Well, that was a thought. Jack stared past the apparition of himself doing a foxtrot and at the physical remains of the Hub. It was black, charred, busted. It had been busted before Dee had blown them up, to be honest, held together with welding and duct tape. Sooner or later they would have had to relocate. It had flooded, it had broken. It had shite ventilation. It had often been infested with insects. Once it had been flooded with natural gas.

"Yeah, I know," he said, "but we're not, and we can't stay here." He waved a hand at the apparition of Suzie stuffing the glove into her bag and furtively glancing about. "And they can't stay here either."

Gwen blinked and swallowed, then jumped from the ledge and turned to him. "Okay."

Five minutes later, Gwen crawled through the ventilation shaft and Jack followed her. She went about thirty metres and then turned left, and stopped, prying open a duct cover.

"I found it last night," she said. "I just didn't know what to do about it. And well."

Jack stuck his head through the shaft opening and peered down at the mess. There was the Ghost Machine, all right, but it was embedded in a load of hardened plastic stuck to a circuit board. The board sparked, but it didn't look like it was going to short or go up in flames. Probably too much power going through the copper, power from a pair of round bowling ball forms that the board leant against.

Jack whistled and pointed. "Is that…?"

"Yeah," Gwen said. "It must have been in that box, and then the explosion knocked it together with this box, with all the batteries."

Jack blinked. "Those things have a shelf life of sixty thousand years."

Gwen's lips twitched. "So, yeah, then the heat from the fire or something melted the bottom of the box, and the machine fell right down on the circuit board, which fell on the batteries." She glanced at him questioningly. "Instant Ghost Machine times sixty thousand years?"

Jack stared at the mass of wires and the sparks shooting through them. He blinked. "What are the odds that this would land here and do this?" he asked out loud, more to himself than Gwen. He didn't expect an answer from Gwen. Really, what were the odds? He couldn't do the math. He didn't want to.

Gwen sighed and laid down in the shaft, away from him, sticking her arms through the opening so that she could poke the machine. "I don’t know how to disable it. Though I suppose if you just pulled this cable here—" She pointed to the thick power cable that laid on the battery terminals. "I might just be unwilling."

Jack laid down in the shaft opposite her and scooted in so that he was hanging over the machine. "Yeah, I know how that is," he mumbled. "But you know…"

"Yeah," Gwen whispered, sliding in further.

Jack grabbed the power cable, and when it didn't send a shock through him, Gwen covered his hand with hers.

"Okay," she said, "on the count of three."

"Right."

"Wait," Gwen said, "do we mean like 'one, two, three, then pull' or 'one, two and pull on—"

Jack yanked the cable out.

 

  


* * *

 

Cora blew on her hands and glanced about. The crowd on the Plass had started to empty a few minutes ago when, in the middle of the gun scene (they called it that because it was the only one with the gun), the images had just winked out, like a film projector flipping off. That had never happened before.

Cora found herself scanning the buildings nearby, wondering if the images had been projected with some sort of new technology all along. If it wasn't just some big hoax. Was it some sort of performance art?

More importantly, what would she do with the rest of her night? Hrm. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her coat and listened to the speculation around her, in the little group a bunch of regulars had formed two nights ago to reserve their viewing spots. Cora didn't know many people's names, but she knew them on sight.

"That big blue box," Huw was saying, "that thing wasn't part of the show."

"How do you know?" someone scoffed. "Could have been a new player."

Huw finished his drink and rolled his eyes, gesturing with the empty can. "Because he _saw_ us. _Us_. Didn't you hear him say he'd come back later?" Huw waved a hand dismissively. "That box is everywhere there's alien stuff."

The crowd around Huw had got larger, but the overall herd had thinned. People around them shuffled from one foot to the other. It was colder now that there were fewer people. Before they'd been using the sheer numbers of the crowd to bolster warmth.

"D'you think he had something to do with the…" Cora drifted off, trying to come up with a good word for the images. "Ghosts?"

Huw shrugged. "Man, it's fucking cold out here. Let's go get something to eat."

A group of ten or so of them broke off and shuffled away, Huw in the center. Cora gave the paving stone one last look, willed the images to reappear, and when they didn't, she dashed off after the rest of them.

It had been fun while it lasted.

 

  


* * *

 

Jack left Gwen on her doorstep and turned the SUV into a small circle at the intersection. Illegal, but useful. Cathedral Road fed into another road and even while he sat at the lights, waiting for them to turn green, he knew he wasn't thinking.

They'd dismantled the Ghost Machine, and as soon as the power had gone out of it, the apparitions had ceased. He and Gwen had made their way up to the atrium to be sure, and upon coming out into the open area and not finding Ghost Toshiko at her desk or Ghost Owen in the autopsy bay, Gwen had sat on some of the old twisted scaffolding and burst into tears. Jack had let her cry for a little while by herself, and then his nerve had got the better of him, and he sat next to her. Gwen leant against his shoulder and cried, big heaving sobs that Jack felt but couldn't emulate. They were stuck somewhere in his chest, like a pill halfway down the oesophagus.

The radio played some song about suffering, and Jack turned it off.

He and Gwen had left the tourist office an hour later, the Ghost Machine all boxed up and ready for Dee to fetch it the next day. Russ had locked the door behind them, yawning, and the three of them had walked down the Trail to watch the crowd milling about the Plass, waiting for another ghostly apparition. Jack had resisted the urge to scream as they had brushed through them on their way to the car park. They'd get the picture after a few days of nothing.

Now that Gwen was home, though, Jack found that he had nowhere to go. He wasn't remotely tired, and just the thought of going back to the Hub made him weary. He took the SUV through a few turns of the city, up the main drags and down, thinking to zoom out to Penarth for no reason. Maybe he'd drive all night around South Wales, over to Swansea, or down the Glamorgan coast.

He pulled up to the kerb in front of the house and let the engine idle, his fingers on the key in the ignition. The windows of Gretchen's house were dark, but as he stared, the upper bedroom light flicked on. A figure moved to the window and stood there, and he could see her hair down and waving about her shoulders. Her shorter form reached up and placed one hand on either side of the frame, as if she needed the support.

Jack turned the engine off, but didn't pull the key out. Gretchen tilted her head—he couldn't see her face from the backlight—and reached up, then pulled the curtains shut. Jack could see seams of light at the top and bottom of the window, and then, after a few seconds, even those went out.

 

  


* * *

 

The flat was dark in the main room when Gwen opened the front door. That wasn't odd, really; it was twelve-thirty, and Duncan would have been asleep for hours, Rhys with him in order to keep up with the baby's crack-of-dawn schedule. She tossed her keys in the bowl and peeled off her jacket, depositing it right in the rubbish bin instead of trying to salvage it. Torn leather didn't mend, and Rhys didn't need to see the rips and shreds, even if it was just from rubble.

Her feet ached. No more muleheels. Trainers for the time being.

Rhys voice came from down the hall, a quiet drone rising up and down and she stopped to listen.

 _"When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be."_

Ah, Duncan was up. Gwen padded into the maisonette again and opened the refrigerator, pulling out a jug of milk. Her tea was wrapped in cellophane and sitting on top of a Tupperware container of the remains of supper. She gave it a pass, reaching for a glass and pouring herself a nightcap.

 _"And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree, there will be an answer, let it be."_

She drained the glass and watched three cars race down the street outside, taillights streaking red in her blurry vision. Her arms hurt, up by the shoulders.

 _"For though they may be parted there is still a chance that they will see, there will be an answer. let it be."_

She left her glass in the sink and rounded the counter for the hallway, her feet silent-running on the carpet as she made her way to the door with the crack of warm yellow light spilling from the seams, as if all things light and good resided in that one place. Her hand fell on the jamb and paused, waiting, for what she wasn't sure, but she waited, listening to Rhys sing in his soft voice.

 _"Let it be, let it be,"_ he all but whispered, and she could tell from the volume that he was in the rocking chair in the far corner of the room. Her hand pushed and the door swung noiselessly. Tank goodness for alien tech and its chemicals—she'd brought home the WD-40 like stuff months ago to paint the hinges of every door.

Rhys sat away from the light so that it painted the ground behind him, and she could just see the ghost of his face when he turned it to her, Duncan asleep on his shoulder, little hands limp and still clutching Rhys's T-shirt. He smiled but didn't pause.

 _"Let it be, let it be, whisper words of wisdom, let it be."_

 

  


* * *

 

"I'm shit at this. You know that. And I already told you this, and told myself this."

Jack ran one finger down the middle of the steel drawer. There was no nameplate, just a series of numbers. Just as well. He hoped he was talking to the right one. Once he'd gone to his wife's grave and talked to her when it was fresh, only to find out weeks later that it was the wrong spot.

"So since you can't argue with me if I say this, I'm sorry. I'm sorry a thousand times."

The door was cold, and Jack pressed his forehead to it, antiseptic and uncaring. Behind him the hum of the compressor coils came on.

"So there. Yeah, you know it."

He curled one hand around the handle of the drawer, but didn't pull. Under his palm, the curve of it was wickedly fitted, as if someone had made these handles with the planes of his hand in mind. Something not to think about. It wasn't always about him.

Jack let go of the handle and turned away. He thought about Ianto Jones, and the stickiness that lived on that name in his head. He thought about the suit and the coffee and the whispers at night. A small camp bed. A few nights in the back of an SUV. A fancy dinner at a restaurant that had ended in disaster and a good story. A red cloth pulled over a cold face.

He glanced about as he made his way up the stairs, but nothing came from the shadows. Nothing peeled away from a corner, clad in a pinstripe. There was no caustic humor echoing through his head.

"I'll miss you," he murmured, then put one foot in front of the other and moved on.

Somewhere, something in a fold of air sighed, something in a spark of time shuddered to a stop, still at last.

 

  


* * *

 

"You better be sure about this," Lois said to Maggie as they hooked up the nozzles. PC Crispin was checking the valves on the pump that would suck the water from the side of the boat and into the heating machine. Lois was sceptical that Maggie's contraption would actually do what she said it would.

Maggie patted the tech that she'd hooked into the power washer pump. "Easy. You put the kittens in this end, and the Pop Tarts come out the other end."

Lois shook her head. "You're a nerd."

Maggie turned a few valves and read the pressure gauges again. "Guilty." She smiled and waved her hands. "Get excited, Lo! We're either about to do something spectacular or completely ruin a natural wonder!"

Bubbers brought the boat around the point and the Needles came into view. Lois smiled at the familiar formations and shoved her hands into her coat pockets. Maybe if she just watched the whole thing and didn't participate, then she wouldn't feel badly when Maggie's super duper power washer knocked over the pillar. Crispin started the generator and the washer roared to life, helped along by some of Maggie's generous rewiring.

Maggie stood a metre from the gunwale and picked up the spray gun. "Crispy, let's use two people just to be sure," she said over the roar of all the engines. Lois smirked when Crispin stood behind Maggie and wrapped his arms about hers, hands over hers on the nozzle. Uh huh. The hardship there.

The lights on the deck were bright, and the sun was just beginning to put in an appearance, in that hazy lightening of the sky that happened long before the sun was even visible. They'd come back after the police had shown up to take the carcass and check over their car (something Lois suspected the PC wouldn't have done if they hadn't been two women, but she let him get on with it anyway, just in case). They'd caught a late ferry and Lois had driven them directly across the island as Maggie had phoned PC Crispin and excitedly explained what she needed him to get.

The 'froo-it', as Maggie would say, of their labours was the power washer whose motor was loud enough to scare every gull in a half-mile radius. As the boat bobbed on the water and they came to the Needle, Maggie lifted the nozzle and depressed the lever; both she and Crispin staggered back as the jet stream of water shot from the washer and flailed in the air like a liquid whip. Lois was reminded of the time she'd watched a single fireman try to wrestle a large hose. Maggie let out a shriek, and Crispin braced his feet on the deck as Bubbers cut the engine. They brought the hose under control and aimed it at the Needle.

The first blast hit it, and Lois winced, afraid that the pressure was so great they'd knock it over, even though she knew that the underwater imaging had shown how fused it was to the bed. Still, it was tall and thin, and it could snap off at the waterline. On the other hand, it wasn't as if it had been there long. Relatively.

The water hit the middle of the Needle and blasted off, shooting in all directions, and Maggie shouted something to Crispin over her shoulder. Lois watched as they tried to keep the stream on the same spot, but the water was kicking back to them and the pressure from the hose against the pillar was enough that it pushed the panda boat back in the waves. Bubbers must have sensed it because he turned the engine on again and kicked the throttle enough to steady them.

Maggie motioned for Lois to turn on the special switch, and when she did, there was a hiss and the water changed in pressure slightly. The heating element was a modification; Lois could feel it as it shot out from the nozzle, like being in a steam room. She could feel her face reddening and she stepped back from the machine.

Maggie and Crispin were soon pink-cheeked and probably sweating. The water assaulted the pillar, and, as Lois watched, began to wash something away. The white surface of the salt pillar started to fade as the salt dissolved in the heated water and left something. Lois was creeping closer to the edge of the deck to peek when there was a cracking sound, and the outside of the pillar just fell off, like a shell, white deposit crust tumbling down into the water.

There was a shout and Maggie whooped. She and Crispin shut off the nozzle and steadied themselves. The boat lurched forward as Bubbers's throttle was the only force left, and he had to swing wide to avoid running them into the Needles. The engine chugged merrily in a huge arc and took them away from the Needles; Maggie and Crispin shut down the power washer and ran to the edge of the deck to lean out over the railing and peer at the Needle.

"What is that?" Crispin asked, and the boat came in for another look just as the first few rays of actual sun crested in the water and hit the pillar at the top. "Holy shit."

Lois watched as the sun hit the clear pillar, some sort of stone like quartz or crystal, maybe. They'd have to take samples. The light slammed into the Needle and fractured out the sides.

"Break the shell," she whispered.

"Take us back!" Crispin shouted, leaving the railing and going for the pilothouse, where Bubbers was doing a fantastic job of obeying their strange steering issues. Lois just leant on the railing and stared as the sun's rays hit more and more of the pillar, creating beams of prismatic colours that burst out of the thing as if they were alive.

"They knew," Maggie said as they looked at arcs of rainbows that shot over the bay. "They thought it was made entirely out of salt, but they knew that something made of salt wouldn't last. So they put this underneath and hoped we wouldn't mind."

Lois sucked in a breath as the boat turned, puling further back from the coast and the Needles themselves and she could see the bigger picture, the crystalline pillar cresting out of the water, the waves hitting the bottom of it, and the whirling colours in the matrix that spun like a turning prism as the sun pierced it, pierced the water and then bounced off the water to hit the pillar again.

"Sometimes I wonder," she murmured, "what we'll find in space when we get there."

Maggie leant forward on the rail and closed her eyes, letting the wind blow her hair back. The spray hit them in the face. "Everything's already started to change," she told Lois. "And it's going to be wicked cool."

The boat rocked in the morning wind, and Crispin and Bubbers made their amazed noises as they came around for another pass at the pillar. This was just the beginning of the work they'd have to do here. They'd be lucky if they got back to Cardiff in three days. So much for Ghost Hub.

The sun shot a beam at the pillar and it was reflected back at her. Lois looked down and watched the rainbow paint her hand and windbreaker, and realised that was all right.

Anything that could make something like this was all right, and if they were out there, then the universe wouldn't be such a bad place, after all.

 _On a quiet street where old ghosts meet  
I see him walking now  
Away from me so hurriedly  
my reason must allow  
That I had wooed not as I should  
a creature made of clay -  
When the angel woos the clay he'd lose  
his wings at the dawn of day._  
\--Patrick Kavanagh (orig)/Loreena McKennitt (alt.)

END

**Author's Note:**

> [Kittens=Pop Tarts](http://www.goats.com/archive/980301.html) and yeah, I checked. You can get Pop Tarts in the UK.
> 
> [Deleted Scenes and Ephemera](http://amand-r.livejournal.com/492357.html)   
> [Soundtracks](http://amand-r.livejournal.com/492599.html)   
> [Master Post](http://amand-r.livejournal.com/493268.html)


End file.
